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It’s simple, hire an athletic trainer

The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest, wrote poet William Blake. He wasn’t talking about football, but administrator Roger Blake very much is when he says the game is at a critical juncture: Someday, without changes, it could run out of receivers.

This Blake is executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation, which oversees athletics at 1,576 high schools. He raised eyebrows recently when he told reporters on a conference call that the next two to three years will be crucial for the future of the nation’s most popular sport.

Eight high school football players have died since this season began, five from head or neck injuries. Three more died during preseason practice from heat-related causes or sickle cell tied to exertion. And concussion concerns continue apace, as they have for several seasons.

“I believe parents are seeing the same stories and the same data and taking a step back,” Blake tells USA TODAY Sports. “What parent wouldn’t be asking, ‘Do I want my child out there?’ ”

If so, it’s hard to tell by the numbers. Roughly 1.1 million high school students play 11-man football in grades 9-12, more than any other sport. That’s down slightly — about 10,000 — for 2014, the most recent season for which a count is available from theNational Federation of State High School Associations. There was a small rise in 2013 after several seasons of small declines.

Blake notes California saw a slight rise recently “but — and I say this with a big, bold but — we are hearing anecdotally from our schools across the state that this year they have seen some significant reductions.”

Four Los Angeles area high schools forfeited games in one week last month because their small rosters were depleted by injury. Cathedral Catholic, a traditional power in San Diego, used to get about 120 to come out for freshman football each year, enough for two teams. This school year Cathedral found around 60 freshmen who wanted to play, part of a steady erosion over the last several years, according to athletics director Dave Smolla.

He says he has long suggested football to parents of Cathedral freshmen as a way for their kids to find ready-made friends as they kick off their high school lives. But these days he often finds openly skeptical parents. “They say, ‘I don’t think so,’ or ‘We’ll find another sport,’ ” Smolla says. “We’re seeing numbers drop across our county.”

They are dropping nationally in youth football, too, but that comes with a caveat: Youth sports overall are down more than youth football.

The Sports & Fitness Industry Association reports 1.88 million kids aged 6 to 14 played organized tackle football in 2014, down 4% since 2009, when reports linking football to brain disease began finding wider audiences. Organized youth sports overall are down more than 9% since then, with soccer (down 8%) and basketball (down 7%) taking bigger hits than football.

“It’s a violent sport, it’s a difficult sport, but it can be really, really safe,” says Justin Alumbaugh, coach of national power De La Salle High School of Concord, Calif. “Last year we had one concussion, this year we have two total. There’s been changes to tackling, changes to contact rules, there’s been a lot of steps in the right direction.”

Among them are USA Football’s Heads Up Football program, which teaches tackling and blocking techniques designed to reduce helmet contact, among other safety considerations. This month the Louisiana High School Athletics Association became the 11th state association to endorse the program.

Blake points to recent rules in California that limit high school football practice to no more than 18 hours a week while allowing live hitting no more than two days a week. The limit on hours has resulted in about 18% fewer injuries, he says, while data is not in yet on the newer rule that limits contact.

“We continue to make changes,” Blake says. “The game is a lot better today and a lot safer today based on if we look back at the data from 30 years ago and the number of deaths and catastrophic injuries.”

But, he says, it’s not yet as safe as it can be. That’s why he thinks the next two to three seasons are so important. “I think it’s critical that we listen” to the experts, he says. “What else should we be doing?”

Changing the kicking game

That’s a question that will be asked on Dec. 11 when leading researchers on the prevention of catastrophic sports injury and illness plus health and safety representatives from the NCAA and National Federation of State High School Associations gather at the University of North Carolina for a summit meeting of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.

“We have this investigative model trying to ascertain for each death whether there were preventable measures that could have been in place,” says Kevin Guskiewicz, co-director of UNC’s Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center. “We need to understand what happened and what could have been done differently.”

NCCSIR uses a data reporting system to catalog catastrophic injuries and deaths with a goal of improving prevention, evaluation, management and rehabilitation.

One of the simplest ways to improve safety in school sports is full-time athletic trainers. Just 37% of U.S. public high schools have them, according to the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. Guskiewicz calls that a scandal.

“If a school can’t afford a certified athletic trainer,” he says, “they need to question whether they should be fielding a football team, or a wrestling team, or a lacrosse team.”

In California, Blake says, “by the data our schools gave us, we have about 19% with a full-time certified athletic trainer on their campus every day. So in 81% of my schools, the best responder out there is the coach.”

Coaches take courses in recognizing concussion symptoms. Now Blake wants similar courses for high school players.

“The more eyes on the sideline the better,” he says. “We need to educate kids. No kid ever wants to come off the field of play, whether it’s football or soccer or whatever. They want to play, so they don’t always tell. … They think they’re invincible at 16, but we’ve got to get teammates recognizing symptoms and get them looking out for each other.”

North Carolina’s football team has allowed small sensors in its helmets for years and Guskiewicz uses them to register the force of impacts to learn what sorts of plays produce the biggest blows to the head. He found they often happen on kicking plays.

Guskiewicz, a member of the NFL’s head, neck and spine committee, presented his research to the NFL and in 2011 the league moved kickoffs from the 30-yard-line to the 35 to produce more touchbacks and thus fewer returns. He says the average number of concussions on NFL kickoffs from 2008 to 2010 was 26; in 2011, there were 15 concussions on kickoffs, a reduction of 42% that he says has held steady since.

College football moved up its kickoff line as well but high schools have not. Guskiewicz says if high schools moved theirs from the 40 to, say, midfield — close enough to produce more touchbacks — it would likely lead to more onside kicks, which also often involve high-impact collisions.

“If you take the punt and the kickoff out of football, you’d need a new name, because then there’s no reason to call it football, right?” Guskiewicz says. “Having said that, there’s no reason you can’t have rules changes.”

Picture this punt formation: The kicking team sends out a long snapper and a punter — and no one else. And the receiving team sends out a punt catcher — that’s it. If he catches the punt, his team gets the ball at that spot, no fair-catch signal necessary because no one would be running downfield to tackle him. Blocked punts and fake punts would be gone from the game.

Sound implausible? Sure, and so far it is something Guskiewicz has only batted around over lunch with Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner John Swofford. But these are the sorts of things Guskiewicz thinks about. And in 2011 he won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, popularly known as a genius grant.

Focused on concussions for years

Three of the injuries that led to fatalities in high school football this season came on kicking plays. Terry Eidson, defensive coordinator and special teams coach at De La Salle, where he’s been coaching for 35 years, offers some ideas on how to make the kicking game safer. On punts, for instance, he favors only face-to-face blocking, no crack-back blocks.

“I don’t understand why we don’t follow some of the same safety protocols as college and pros,” he says. “We should eliminate the wedges on the back wall of kickoff returns.”

The NFL and NCAA allow only two-man wedges. What’s the limit in high schools?

“There isn’t one,” Eidson says. “You see four- and five-man wedges all the time. … There will always be collisions. That’s football. But you can make it safer.”

High school kickoff specialists are getting better all the time at spiking onside kicks into the ground so that they fly high in the air.

“At the college level, if it hits the ground once and pops in the air, you can call a fair catch,” Eidson says. “We need that in high school. Kid gets absolutely drilled, and if he doesn’t, the guys protecting him do. It’s a high-impact collision and it’s not necessary.”

These are the sort of conversations Blake was hoping for when he said the game is at a critical juncture. “My quote makes headlines because we’re California,” he says. “But executive directors in every state are saying the same things.”

Blake says many leaders in high school sports were talking about concussion concerns at a time when the NFL was still dismissing them.

The national federation “and California, many of our states, we’ve been trying to address this” for the better part of 10 years, Blake says, “when the medical people were saying this is an issue. But it has only been recently that it has gotten momentum. It is because the NFL keeps the spotlight on it. So, for that, I’m glad the NFL finally came to the party. The high schools have been trying to talk about this for quite a few years.”

ORIGINAL POST:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/highschool/2015/11/17/high-school-football-participation-california/75899218/

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Kevin Guskiewicz named College of Arts and Sciences dean

Kevin Guskiewicz, a neuroscientist and internationally recognized expert on sport-related concussions and a senior associate dean in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences, will become the College’s 22nd dean. Guskiewicz was selected after an extensive nationwide search led by Executive Vice Provost and Chief International Officer Ron Strauss, and succeeds Dean Karen M. Gil, who will return to the College’s department of psychology and neuroscience after serving as dean for more than six years.

A 20-year member of Carolina’s faculty, Guskiewicz shared a vision for the immediate and long-term future of the College that inspired the search committee and he emerged early as a top candidate.

“Kevin is a natural fit to become the next leader of our vibrant College of Arts and Sciences, which provides students with a critical foundation for learning and discovery every day,” said UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “An extremely accomplished teacher and researcher renowned for his expertise in injury prevention, Kevin represents the very best of Carolina. We look forward to his continued leadership on our campus.”

Guskiewicz currently oversees the academic departments and programs in the division of natural sciences and mathematics in the College. He is also the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Exercise and Sport Science and co-director of the Matthew Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center and director of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes. He holds appointments in the departments of orthopaedics and physical medicine and rehabilitation, the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center and the doctoral program in human movement science.

“Kevin combines a deep interest in academic research with a real appreciation for the importance of using his findings to impact important problems,” said Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost James W. Dean, Jr. “In his senior associate dean role, he has ably guided the natural sciences during a time of great change, including a pedagogical revolution in the teaching of science. Led by Kevin and others, Carolina has become one of the leading institutions in the country for new teaching and learning models.”

“I am excited to lead the College of Arts and Sciences at the University I have grown to love over the past 20 years,” said Guskiewicz. “During this time I have gained an appreciation for the different challenges and needs of faculty, students and staff from distinct areas, but with a common mission – to be the very best global public research university that also serves the people of North Carolina. I look forward to introducing initiatives to bridge the gap between research and teaching so that our students can benefit from the world-renowned research of our faculty.”

Guskiewicz earned a B.S. in athletic training from West Chester University, M.S. in exercise physiology/athletic training from the University of Pittsburgh and Ph.D. in sports medicine from the University of Virginia. Over the past 22 years, his research has focused on sport-related concussion, investigating its effect on balance and neurocognitive function in athletes, and the long-term neurological issues related to playing sport.

His groundbreaking work has garnered numerous awards, including fellowships in the American College of Sports Medicine, the National Academy of Kinesiology and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association. His research has influenced concussion guidelines and recommendations made by these organizations as well as the NCAA and the NFL. He was named to the NCAA’s Concussion Committee, the NFL Players Association’s Mackey-White Committee and the NFL’s Head, Neck, and Spine Committee.

In 2011, he was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship for his innovative work on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of sport-related concussions. He and his colleagues used that award to help improve safety in high school sports and to help the U.S. military identify and treat serious head injuries. In 2013, Time magazine named him a Game Changer, one of 18 “innovators and problem-solvers that are inspiring change in America.”

Guskiewicz and his wife, Amy, have four children: Jacob, 19; Nathan, 17; Adam, 15, and Tessa, 8. He assumes the deanship Jan. 1, 2016, and will continue his involvement with UNC-Chapel Hill’s leading concussion program while serving the University and the College.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest academic unit on campus and forms the academic core of “the Carolina experience.” It is home to more than 16,000 undergraduate students, over 2,500 graduate students and nearly 1,000 faculty that teach 85 percent of all undergraduate hours at Carolina. The College offers more than 40 academic majors and is composed of over 70 departments, curricula, programs, centers and institutes. Eight of its departments are ranked in the top 25 graduate programs by U.S. News & World Report.

– See more at: http://college.unc.edu/2015/10/29/guskiewicz-dean/#sthash.L9OLvKhd.dpuf

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Kevin Guskiewicz named next dean of College of Arts and Sciences